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Does IT matter.. Nicholas Carr asks a simple but profound question

“The Big Switch”, argues that cloud computing is going to follow a utility model, as witnessed with the electricity industry. This is changing and going to change in a fundamental way, the way we live, work, play, interact, learn and will eventually evolve a different society, just like industralization and electricity gave rise a to new middle class. We are already seeing this transformation with companies like Google, facebook, sales force, amazon following the utility grid model, in the business world. However where this is going to create the most difference is in the rural society, when utility computing is going to lower the entry barriers and bridge the “digital divide”

From a technology perspective, there are couple things which have contributed to this evolution, primarily technologies like virtualization, abundance of broadband, faster CPU’s, solid state storage, thin and intelligent end devices and the ability to instantiate an entire data center, with a few mouse clicks, are proving as building blocks to make agile and global data centers a reality.

From a business model perspective, models like Google Adwords, pay per click, unbundling, eco-system partnerships at a consumer and business level and at a ecosystem level, “power to the consumer” are proving to be transformative. “Eye-ball marketing” is quickly turning into business models.

This model is particularly going to make an profound impact in the emerging economies, where good infrastructure is a scarcity and the cost of doing business use to be high. As CK Prahlad argues, “there is money to be made at the bottom of the pyramid”

It would be worthwhile, to leverage this phenomenon and scout opportunities to make a difference to this techno-socialist landscape.